WoW: The War Within – Warband Banks, Explained (2024)

Warbands is a new account-wide system being introduced in World of Warcraft: The War Within that aims to encompass all the efforts and progression of a player's Battle.net account. There are several new features included in the Warbands system that bring various quality-of-life improvements and conveniences to players owning multiple alternate (alt) characters, allowing them to enjoy different classes without losing progress. One of these features is the Warband Banks, which players get to experience early in the new expansion Pre-Patch (Patch 11.0) released on July 23rd, 2024.

Warband Banks is essentially an account-wide bank that players can access with any of their characters on a single Battle.net account, allowing them to easily store and share non-soulbound items. This guide will explain everything players need to know about Warband Banks in World of Warcraft: The War Within, including how to unlock them.

How to Unlock Warband Banks

To unlock the new Warband Banks feature, players will need to simply log in and access their Bank. Your Warband shares items between all of your characters, so it doesn't matter which character you log into first. Just walk up to a normal Bank teller and open the Warband Bank tab to see your shared storage – when it is available in-game, that is.

Your Warband Bank will be accessible from any normal Bank in the game, but there's a special spell you can unlock that allows you to summon your Warband Bank to your location – and it's account-wide. This allows access to its items no matter where you are, but to get the Warband Bank Distance Inhibitor, you must finish a series of quests that start at max level.

How To Unlock Remote Warband Bank Access

To unlock Warband Bank remote access, for crafting and Item management on-the-go, you must complete a short series of quests. After logging in to Patch 11.0 for the first time with a Level 70 character, a quest called Warbands: Warbanding Together will be automatically added to the quest log, tasking players to seek out Blue in Gadgetzan.

Once players talk to Blue, she will provide them with two quests that can be completed just outside and south of Gadgetzan:

• Warbands: Rift Reader - Scan 6 Transpositional Anomalies.
• Warbands: Space Ghosts by the Coast - Kill and loot Partially Teleported creatures for 8 Spatial Residue.

After turning in the two quests, Blue will ask the players to head southwest, just slightly out of town, to complete another quest:

• Warbands: Twinsposition - Activate the Transpositional Signal Recombobulatron and defeat a clone of the player it summons.

Head back to Blue, and a final quest will be waiting for the players:

• Warbands: Spacetime is Money - Head to the bank building south of Blue and place the De-Recombobulatron Matrix.

Return to Blue to turn in the last quest and unlock the Warband Banks feature. Players can access Warband Banks through any regular bank NPC or by using their newly learned spell, Warband Bank Distance Inhibitor, found in the spell book. The spell has a two-hour cooldown and gives players access to the Warband Bank for 10 minutes.

Warband Bank System Explained

The main purpose of the Warband Banks is to allow the storing and sharing of non-soulbound items and resources between all the characters in a player's Battle.net account. This feature also allows players to store and transfer gold, something which was difficult to do for characters across different realms. Warband Banks have a total of 5 tabs, each with 98 available slots, for a total of 490 slots. Similar to regular banks, Warband Bank tabs require players to pay an increasing amount of gold to unlock each one, starting with 1,000 gold for the first tab. Getting all five tabs can be quite costly, but considering how many slots are available with just the first two tabs unlocked, players may not need all the additional space.

Warband banks will be extremely useful for a new type of gear being introduced in The War Within, called Warbound until Equipped (WuE). While Blizzard is still working out the details, they plan to have WuE become a viable way to gear up alts more easily. They aim to have WuE gear drop in various content such as raids, dungeons, and the new Delves feature, as bonus personal loot. The gear will be one upgrade track lower than the source it dropped from and supposedly not be limited to the class that is looting it.

When Will Warband Banks Be Available

Warband Banks was meant to become available with the launch of patch 11.0 (07/23/24), however Blizzard have currently disabled the new feature due to a critical issue. While players can still complete the pre-requisite questline, accessing the new feature will have to wait. At the moment, Blizzard have not given an estimated timeframe of when Warband Banks will be fixed, but many speculate that it should be up at the next available weekly reset (07/30/24).

World of Warcraft

4.0

MMORPG

Systems

Franchise

Warcraft

Platform(s)

PC

Released

November 23, 2004

Developer(s)

Blizzard

Engine

Unreal Engine

ESRB

T for Teen: Blood and Gore, Crude Humor, Mild Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence (online interactions not rated)